Sochi 2014: Womens Finals

Gold Medal Game: USA v Canada 2-3 OT - For the fourth consecutive Winter Olympics, the Canadian women's hockey team celebrated while the Americans were forced to watch. This one just proved to be more incredible, or perhaps more painful, than the rest. Marie-Philip Poulin scored a power-play goal 8:10 into overtime, her second goal of the game, to give Canada a 3-2 overtime victory against the archrival United States and the gold medal at the 2014 Sochi Olympics in front of 10,639 at Bolshoy Ice Dome.

"It's an amazing moment," Poulin said. "We all know it was a team effort. We never gave up. I'm so happy we got it back. It was a great journey."

Poulin also scored twice in a 2-0 victory for Canada against the United States in the final at the 2010 Vancouver Olympics. Canada has won four consecutive gold medals since the United States won the inaugural women's tournament at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. That was Canada's last loss at the Olympics, and this victory stretched the winning streak to 20 games. The Americans have won four of the past five IIHF Women's World Championships and defeated the Canadians in four consecutive exhibitions leading up to Sochi, but Canada prevailed 3-2 in the group stage and retained its title as Olympic champions.

"We train our whole lives to win a gold medal here. It's the world stage," American defenseman Megan Bozek said. "We've been put in situations, not the Olympics like this, the past four years. This is what we trained for. We didn't train for a silver. We trained for a gold medal."

The Canadians scored twice in the final 3:26 of regulation to force the overtime. Brianne Jenner started the Canadian comeback. Her shot was going well wide of the net, but it hit U.S. defenseman Kacey Bellamy in the knee and changed course. Poulin punched one past American goaltender Jessie Vetter from the edge of the crease with 54.6 seconds left to level the score at 2-2. Before Canada tied it, the Americans had a chance to ice the game, but Kelli Stack's try at an empty net from her own blue line hit the left post.

"That's how you just know that it wasn't our night," Stack said. "The puck literally just missed going in by an inch. So we just have to tell ourselves that everything happens for a reason and if we were meant to win gold medals that puck would have went in the back of the net."

On the day Canada also won gold in women's curling, forward Hayley Wickenheiser had it on her mind as the puck drifted towards the empty goal.

"I just said, 'sweep, sweep it. Get it wide,'" Wickenheiser said. "I didn't think it was going to go in by the angle but you never know. It turned the game around, really gave us another life. I mean, what a finish."

The gold medal is the fourth for Wickenheiser, forward Jayna Hefford and captain Caroline Ouellette, and they equaled the record for consecutive Winter Olympics with a gold medal in any sport. It is the first with the team for coach Kevin Dineen, who began the 2013-14 season as the coach of the Florida Panthers. He was fired November 8, and a little more than a month later surprisingly took the job as coach of Canada's women's national team less than two months before the trip to Sochi.

"Sometimes a door closes, another one opens. I don't know how that all works out," Dineen said. "I haven't read the manual on where I go from here. It's a little bit of a left turn to take on this job. As I told my players before the game, the first time I met with them, I couldn't wait to get on the ice with them. In the last two months, I think I've become better at what I've done."

As for U.S. coach Katey Stone, she had her own opinion regarding the "left turn" Dineen took in his coach career. "I think you took a right turn, not a left turn," she joked.

The sequence leading up to Poulin's golden goal included a couple of controversial decisions by the officials. Six seconds after Canada defenseman Catherine Ward was sent to the penalty box at 6:09 of overtime, United States forward Jocelyne Lamoureux was called for slashing when she took a whack with her stick after goaltender Shannon Szabados covered the puck. Already 4-on-4 for overtime, it meant nearly two minutes of 3-on-3 action. Wickenheiser was tripped by Hillary Knight on a breakaway and the referee initially pointed to center ice for a penalty shot, but the call was changed to cross-checking. Poulin scored 39 seconds later on the 4-on-3 after a feed from defenseman Laura Fortino. After initially saying "no comment" when asked about the controversial calls, Stone offered a more thorough response when asked if the officiating needed to be better at this level.

"I think it is no different, officiating, developing players, developing programs, the game is growing by leaps and bounds," Stone said. "The speed and pace of the game is tremendous. It is a great, great product. We have to make sure that every part of the game operation, the game management, is developing at as fast a rate as it possibly can."

United States captain Meghan Duggan opened the scoring at 11:57 of the second period. Alex Carpenter made it 2-0 for the United States 2:01 into the third period. Knight had the puck on the outside of the left circle and fed Carpenter near the right post for a directed shot off the right post and in. Carpenter is the daughter of Bobby Carpenter, who was the third pick in the 1981 NHL Draft by the Washington Capitals and had 728 points in 1,178 career NHL games for five teams. After the game concluded, the Canadian fans in the arena completed their own rendition of "Oh, Canada" before the proper version after the medals were awarded. Players then waved flags on the ice and celebrated with victory cigars in the dressing room.

"We believed," Wickenheiser said. "We had the experience and the ability to come back and do what needed to be done. I'm just so proud of our team and we stayed classy the whole way through it. That was a big win for us."

There was jubilation and there was despair, just as there is every time the two superpowers of women's hockey meet at the end of the sport's biggest tournaments. The Americans were stunned, searching for answers as how this could have happened, and how Canada's stranglehold on the gold continues at this event.

"There really isn't much to say. You can't take the sting away," Stone said. "You just have to tell them how proud of them you are and how much they mean to you and what a tremendous privilege and honor it was to be a part of it."

Bronze Medal Game: Sweden v Switzerland 3-4 - The losing didn't bother the Swiss women's hockey team, even as it was slogging through the round-robin without a victory and finishing last in its group. Sure, the 9-0 loss to the United States hurt. But a 5-0 victory by Canada was the closest Switzerland had ever come to the three-time defending Olympic champions, and a playoff victory over Russia put the Swiss in the semifinals. When they lost just 3-1 to Canada in the semifinals, they felt like they were ready to claim their first women's hockey medal in the country's Olympic history.

"We didn't care about the color of a medal," said Florence Schelling, who stopped 28 shots to help Switzerland beat Sweden 4-3 in the bronze medal game on Thursday. "A medal is a medal."

Jessica Lutz broke a third-period tie with 6:17 to play as Switzerland rallied from a two-goal deficit with four straight third-period goals to earn just its second victory of the Sochi Games. Sara Benz and Phoebe Stanz scored to help Switzerland tie the game, and Aline Muller scored a 175-foot empty-netter with 67 seconds left that turned out to be the difference.

"Everybody believed in those two goals, and then we even scored four," Stanz said. "When the first goal went in, that's like when the knot unties. That's how it was for our team. The second goal going in, that just showed us that it only takes one more goal to win this game."

Because of the tournament format, Switzerland was lumped in a round-robin group with the three top-ranked teams in the world -- including the United States and Canada, who were scheduled to play for the gold medal later Thursday. But it also meant the Swiss were guaranteed a spot in the playoffs without winning a game, and they needed just one victory to reach the medal round. So, when they lost as expected to the U.S., Canada and Finland, they never lost their confidence.

"We knew it would be like that, and we were really prepared for that," forward Katrin Nabholz said. "When it was 2-0, we knew we had nothing to lose. Then, we are at our best."

Valentina Wallner stopped 22 shots for Sweden. Michelle Lowenheilm scored in the first period, and Erica Uden Johansson made it 2-0 with 62 seconds left in the second period on a long, fluttering goal that Schelling, who played at Northeastern University in Boston, allowed to tip off the webbing of her glove. The Swiss cut the deficit to 2-1 early in the third when a deflected puck skittered over to Benz in the slot, and she slapped it past Wallner. With 13:47 left in regulation, Stanz scored on a rebound. The game was still tied 2-2 when Lara Stalder kept the puck in the zone and skated in before shuffling it over to the middle for Lutz, who flipped it past Wallner for the go-ahead goal. Muller's empty-netter seemed to clinch it but, with the goalie still pulled, Pernilla Winberg cut it to 4-3 with 44 seconds left. Sweden spent the last 30 seconds trying to clear the puck out of its own zone, though, and when the last seconds ticked off the clock the Swiss poured over the boards and threw their equipment into the air in celebration. Because of the dominance of the North Americans, who have won every gold medal and all but one silver in Olympic history, the rest of the world is essentially playing for third place.

"The bronze medal is our goal. The medal games were our goal," Benz said. "Of course we wanted to win every game, but maybe next Olympics."